In one of their competitive swearing-matches, Hal calls
Falstaff "that roasted Manningtree ox with the pudding in his
belly" (Henry IV, Part One, 2.4.457-8). At the
annual Manningtree fair whole oxen were stuffed and roasted
on a spit.

One of the biggest fairs was held every August in Smithfield,
near London: Bartholomew Fair. All London was there, as a
contemporary
ballad and a fine comedy by
Ben
Jonson show: the Dramatis Personae for
the play includes a hobby-horse seller, a gingerbread-woman,
a cutpurse, a ballad- singer (who works with the cutpurse), a
pig-woman (selling pig roasted on the spot) -- and the kind
of people who were called "roarers."*

Others in the cast include a tapster, a
horse-dealer, a roarer (a young bully), a bawd, a "mistress
o' the game," a madman, a beadle (a messenger or minor
officer of the courts), a wrestler, a
clothier, a corncutter, a number of puritans (severely
satirized), a naïve
justice of the peace, and a brace of
gentlemen.

The play as a whole gives one of the most complete pictures
of the life of ordinary people in the period.

A folk song of the period celebrates the teeming life of
Bartholomew Fair. It lists the seemingly endless variety of
trades represented there, not excluding those that are less
respectable. It is accompanied here by a simple pipe and
tapping foot.

Footnotes

A good mouthful

In one of their competitive swearing-matches, Hal calls
Falstaff "that roasted Manningtree ox with the pudding in his
belly" (Henry IV, Part One, 2.4.457-8). At the
annual Manningtree fair whole oxen were stuffed and roasted
on a spit.

Roarers and bawds

Others in the cast include a tapster, a
horse-dealer, a roarer (a young bully), a bawd, a "mistress
o' the game," a madman, a beadle (a messenger or minor
officer of the courts), a wrestler, a
clothier, a corncutter, a number of puritans (severely
satirized), a naïve
justice of the peace, and a brace of
gentlemen.

The play as a whole gives one of the most complete pictures
of the life of ordinary people in the period.

The patrons of Bartholomew Fair

A folk song of the period celebrates the teeming life of
Bartholomew Fair. It lists the seemingly endless variety of
trades represented there, not excluding those that are less
respectable. It is accompanied here by a simple pipe and
tapping foot.